Event Horizon
by AlltheAces
Summary: Of course you would get attached to your first Pokémon. You were such a good student, you just had to fight the Champion together, didn't you... until everything went wrong.


_So in short, in any battle, the weak will be swept aside while the best and strongest will survive!_

_Yes Sensei! The class chirped back as a whole while writing notes down in their handbooks…_

* * *

><p>The trainer had taken these words to heart, but understood them as 'Only the best continue to the finals, and only the strongest can defeat the Champion.'<p>

Of course, there's always a hidden implication, some dark, some innocent, each and every one different to the trainer.

The trainer's consciousness reluctantly pulled away from the mantra that had brought everything to this last all-out battle. The trainer focused on what was possibly the hardest fight of anyone's career. The trainer quickly recalled the nearly-unconscious Arcanine out of the fight and selected one that was stereotypically harder for the opposing Pokémon to beat.

The battle continued, hyper beams and lightning blasts fired and returned in a deadly display of strength, the cries of the monsters drowning out and being drowned out by the cheering crowd.

The red-haired opponent, the Champion, shouted a command over the noise, somehow being heard by his Aerodactyl. The ancient lizard darted forward, grasping the torso of the battle scarred Raichu in its weathered talons. The rodent squealed in pain and fear as it was lifted off of the ground, instinctively slapping the underbelly of the Aerodactyl with its tail and discharging ten thousand volts. The Aerodactyl roared as the shock sang through its body, falling silent as it was jerked into unconsciousness from the pain. The Raichu gave a panicked shriek, realizing that it had miscalculated when the Aerodactyl's wings crumpled and both began to fall. Twin beams of red light shot out from the respective trainer's Pokéballs, recalling both before either Pokémon impacted.

An awed hush fell over the crowd as the trainers locked eyes again, both carefully deciding the next move. The opponent of the League was to send out a Pokémon first, as per official rules. Fingering a Dusk Ball, the trainer was about to call out a Chandelure, but stopped. The trainer's hand settled on another Pokéball, this one more weathered than the rest. Sending out the immense Swampert, the trainer waited for the Champion to decide on a suitable opponent.

After a few moments, the Champion sent out a Kingdra. Immediately, the battlefield split down the center, rolling back to reveal an immense pool. Both Pokémon jumped in without hesitation.

The crowd cheered, sensing the end of the fight was near. Computers whirred, the probability of the outcome of the fight being calculated and sent to the betting monitors in placed in front of the crowd, who rapidly responded to the flashing information with the swish of cash cards. Lance nodded at his Kingdra, and as it submerged he gave a single command to use Smokescreen.

The water became clouded with an inky fluid, rapidly expanding towards the Swampert and simultaneously concealing the Kingdra's location. The Swampert warily swam backwards, whirling its arms to dissuade the tendrils reaching and cloaking everything in the tank.

"Dive, Laguno."

The Swampert did so, sinking itself completely. The Smokescreen completely blocked Laguno's normally excellent vision, so it closed its eyes and felt the ambient vibrations with its fin. Echoes bounced around the water, but Laguno had trained in muddy washes before and quickly located the Kingdra, which was _rushing right towards him_! With a panicked roar, Laguno fired a concentrated beam of ice energy at the dragon, but it was swept aside by the Kingdra's whirlpools. Laguno desperately swam down; feeling a swoosh of water as the Kingdra barely missed his back. Laguno darted towards the disoriented Kingdra in an attempt of a physical attack, but was battered back by the powerful jets of water erupting from his opponent's snout.

Tumbling head over heels, the Swampert tried to swim away to the edge of the field, but was halted in place by the suction from a whirlpool much larger than the others. Eyes wide with fear, Laguno swam downwards, but was barely able to brush the bottom of the pool with the tips of his fingers before the whirlpool grew larger, pinning him in the center of the vortex.

Laguno struggled against the current; he was whirling around so quickly that he couldn't slam his forearms into the ground to stop the spinning, the pressure resisting and crushing against any movement. Lancing pain shot across his forearm, just over an old scar he had received after landing in a rockslide. While struggling to wrench his head against the current to inspect the damage, another deep slash bit into a head fin. And another into his tail. And another into his soft underbelly.

Up. Over. Side. Up. Up. Face. Back. Without any rhythm or pattern to the attacks combined with the rushing water, Laguno was powerless to defend himself. Thin bloody tendrils dyed a sickly green from the filtered light pooled over the small of the Laguno's back, held there by the current. An even greater amount eddied viciously underneath his stomach. Angered and maddened by the searing pain, Laguno thrashed in a last-ditch effort to free himself and succeeded, the whirlpool disappearing.

But the damage was done.

The smokescreen had been cleared away by the last whirlpool, but it soon became obvious that it was no longer needed by the Kingdra. Laguno, losing blood rapidly, could barely focus enough to track the untouched blur that the Kingdra had transformed into. He swung blindly, slamming a lucky punch into the Kingdra's eye with a glass-shuddering crack. The Kingdra recoiled to circle around, slightly dizzy from a fractured skull, its eye swelling closed.

Laguno fell onto all fours, blindly swiveling his head back and forth as blood continued to flow freely into the large green cloud surrounding it. The Kingdra continued to wait, patiently watching for the right moment to appear. Laguno shuddered and pushed itself onto his hind legs to prepare an attack, inhaling water, but chocked on seemingly nothing.

A thin green line appeared on its light blue underbelly, stretching from left to right. Laguno exhaled the aborted attack and could only stare along with his trainer as the aftermath of the Kingdra's Aqua Jet played out in slow motion, the line thickening and releasing a thick sheet of green into the water. In morbid fascination, Laguno and his trainer watched as something long and fleshy and _pink_ began to spill out through the gaping hole cut in the Swampert's stomach. The Kingdra looked on, unconcerned while a long white strip of flesh drifted off of one of its horns.

The trainer snapped out of the observer's stupor and hastily recalled the crumpling Pokémon. The crowd roared and catcalled at the trainer's hurriedly retreating back as the trainer angrily threw half of the winnings from the earlier battles to the clerk collecting the after-battle prize.

In the post-battle lobby, the trainer hurriedly handed the Pokéballs off to a Nurse Joy who whisked them off into the waiting operating rooms. The trainer numbly sat down to wait in the lobby, the Nurse shaking her head in pity before following the Blissey carrying a status report on a clipboard.

As the Nurse's steps retreated, the trainer replayed the events of the final battle through with a morbid detachment, hand unconsciously clenching at the feeling of helplessness when watching Laguno being mercilessly beaten, no – _executed_, while in _his own element_…

Relaxing, the trainer looked down at a twinge of pain in one hand, which now bore four semi-circle imprints. Realizing that brooding over how Laguno was defeated wasn't going to make him better, the trainer shook out the hand and crossed his arms, staring at the far wall. A tremble shook through the trainer's body.

This wasn't working. The trainer frowned, quickly searching for any subject that could serve as a suitable distraction. With a flick of the eyes, the trainer decided to recite the lessons that were taught to every single Pokémon trainer in the six regions.

_Grass beats water, ground, and rock, but is weak to fire, ice, flying, and poison. _

_Fire beats grass, ice, and bug, but is weak to water, rock, and ground. _

_Water… _

The trainer's face grew slack, eyes glazing over as thoughts wandered towards green and pink and _helplessness_. Blinking out of the haze, the trainer frowned in concentration and continued to list all of the well-known statistics.

_Water beats fire, ground, and rock, but is weak to electric and grass. Some types have fewer weaknesses than others, but some moves are stronger, allowing an opponent with more experience to defeat a Pokémon with its own element, provided the strength can overwhelm the opponent…_

_And remember this child, in any battle; the weak will be swept aside while the best and strongest will _survive_!_

_Y_e_s…S_e_n_s_e_i_…_

The image of Laguno's face just before he was pulled into -pain_safety_- the Pokéball flashed across the trainer's mind.

The trainer could hear screaming. Looking around, the trainer could see concerned fearful _just like Laguno's_ confused faces flowing in a stream _circling like the Kingdra-shark_ before everything spun around and realization flickered-

Joy's _pink_ face swam into the forefront of the stream, _pink_ hand reaching forward to just touch-

"Your Swampert is…"

The trainer inhaled _when did it get so hard to breathe?_ before everything turned gray.


End file.
